skandalon

Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain, because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from.

✖ Via The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Little Brown [to be published]

The above quote can be find D.T. Max short essay “The Unfinished. David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest.”” which was published in The New Yorker, March 9, 2009.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008.

• Sep 12, 2010 link notes tagged: art author novel book posthumous dullness pain dull stimulation shock distraction lost entertainment modernity 21st century America Foster Wallace creation depression drug suicide death

communication technology catastrophe animal destruction death responsability shock image representation human oil bp british_petroleum disaster copyright fair_use constitution media press freedom zapruder

✖ Via Boston.com / The Big Picture: A Brown Pelican is seen on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

I first found this photo over at Washington’s Blog. The post where it appears makes a (short) argument about the ban of media coverage apparently imposed by BP and US officials and the alleged suspension of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution it represents. At the very end of the post, the author seems to put forward a legal argument supporting the publication of such pictures as the one shown above:

In addition, use of such images is also protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, reproduction is protected under the “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases”, since:

(1) The images are of historical significance;

(2) They show facts which cannot be conveyed effectively in any other manner, and

(3) Therefore the Constitution trumps copyright law. (more)

Now, what exactly are those “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases” ? It’s not a law, but a “line of cases” and it could plausibly be used to challenge the ban of some media access to the site of the catastrophe (see The New York Times: “BP and Officials Block Some Coverage of Golf Oil Spill”). More thoughts about this over at Aphelis.

• Jul 14, 2010 link notes tagged: communication technology catastrophe animal destruction death responsability shock image representation human oil BP British Petroleum disaster copyright fair use constitution media press freedom Zapruder

Another way of saying this, as Viktor Shklovsky did in his seminal 1916 essay, “Art as Technique,” is that art’s aim “is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception.” Through difficulty, through impeded progress (rather than through predictability and velocity), art offers us a return to apprehension and thought.

✖ Via The Quarterly Conversation, “DeLillo’s 24-hour psycho” by Lance Olsen, March 1st, 2010

“Lance Olsen’s most recent novel is Head in Flames (Chiasmus, 2009). He teaches narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.”

• Apr 08, 2010 link notes tagged: art time speed entertainment distraction shock world experience DeLillo book novel author review